Retiring to the Hills in India?

How many times have you come across a beautiful place and thought, “Oh! I could build a house nearby and retire here?” I must have done it every two kilometers in North Sikkim, it looks so bewitchingly beautiful and so utterly, truly and completely green. My husband, more often than not, nods his head in agreement. Till date, I have been scared of only one thing, the cold weather in the mountains. It is one thing to take it in small doses and it is quite another to think of living it day in and day out. The mere thought makes me shiver.

The house has been built long ago by a Scotsman, passionate reader of the accounts of that period: The Indian Alps and How We Crossed Them, by A Lady Pioneer. Land of the Lama. The Phantom Rickshaw. My Mercara Home. Black Panther of Singrauli. His true spirit has called to him, then, informed him that it, too, was wild and brave, and refused to be denied the right of adventure. As always, the price for such romance had been high and paid for by others. Porters had carried boulders from the riverbed-legs growing bandy, ribs curving into caves, backs into U’s, faces being bent slowly to look always at the ground-up to this site chosen for a view that could raise the human heart to spiritual heights.

It gave me some food for thought about our retirement dreams.

PS. My personal favorite still remains Ladakh. But I hear that Ladakh is getting too crowded now a days.

PPS. I guess it is now Spiti but I know I will never be able to retire to Spiti!

I am Mridula Dwivedi, I love to travel! I started my travel blog in 2005. I have been going places since! For more details do check out my media kit! In another life I did a Ph.D. from IIT Kanpur. I was a professor when I quit my job in 2015.